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Permalink Reply by connie IIS on July 25, 2008 at 3:02

Hi, sorry I don't have experience in that. But, I am trying to find out if the mineral rights are going to revert back to my property. I am trying to learn if there are conditions (besides production) in which they won't revert AND what I have to do to claim them.

Would you share - Did you purchase the property without them? Did you sell or lease the mineral rights that came back to you? How did you know they reverted? Thanks for any info!!

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Permalink Reply by RL on July 25, 2008 at 10:34

Hereford, thanks for sharing your experience. I think this is a very interesting and important blog. I would also like to hear from other landowners on this.

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Permalink Reply by herefordsnshale on July 25, 2008 at 12:00

If there has been no production in a section for ten years the mineral rights revert back to the surface owners. The only thing I know of that can prevent this from happening--besides drilling or production--is if they were deeded to someone else. There is a term for deeding mineral rights, it has been used here before but I can't think of it at the moment, I want to say mineral servitude but that might not be right. The sonrise lite site is always the best first step to finding out what is happening and has happened in your section. Since mineral rights are not taxed (yet!) they are not kept up with like real estate and finding the mineral owner of a piece of property can be an exhausting job. I bought my land in 1994, with no minerals. In 1999 I was approached by Cross Timbers about leasing, I said I didn't think I owned them but they said I did and gave me a bank draft for $100 an acre. So me and several of my neighbors signed leases with them. About three weeks later, I got a call from the landman, he sounded almost in tears, he said they caught a mistake and we did NOT have the minerals at this time, so the drafts were not funded. I pretty well gave up on ever owning the mineral rights until I got a call from KCS/Petrohawk in 2006. I told them I had been down that road before and it dead-ended, he said he was aware of Cross Timbers' debacle and that was no longer an issue, the mineral rights had expired. So I told him if he was certain that we could probably work something out, he said he would get their attorneys on it. He called me a couple of days later and said they were about 90% sure I owned them but they needed to check a couple of things first, I said okay, he called me back the next day and said they had verfied to their satisfaction that I owned them and he brought me a lease and bank draft. So that's the story. I found out somewhat by accident. There's really not a good way to "claim" them, other than trying to lease them. You could hire an attorney to do a title opinion, but that would be costly. So that's it, I had been wanting to tell this story, thanks for the opportunity!

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